Scorched Earth Policy - environmental policy of the George W. Bush administration

E: The Environmental Magazine, May, 2001 by Jim Motavalli

How effective will the Bush Administration's tactics be? According to Leslie Jones, staff attorney at the Wilderness Society, "It's very difficult to make generalizations. The monument designations are Presidential proclamations made under the federal Antiquities Act and therefore very difficult to repeal or rescind. But they will chip away at them. The Forest Service's roadless area plan is already a final rule published in the Federal Register, so changing it requires a whole process of going back through the rule-making with notices and comments all over again." Soon after taking office, Bush reversed himself on a campaign pledge to impose mandatory restrictions on global warming gasses, a decision that would have significantly impacted the coal industry. Bush changed his position after heavy lobbying from the coal and electric power industries. Efforts to undermine Clinton-era environmental policies were also underway, though some of these were technical policy shifts that take place under the media's radar. In just his first few months in office, Bush also repealed rules that required mining companies not to endanger public health or damage the environment, began a rollback of National Forest protections, withdrew standards for arsenic in drinking water and signed a bill overturning the Clinton-era rule requiring workplaces to address the problem of repetitive stress syndrome (which affects more than 1.8 million workers, most of them women).

Few environmentalists doubt that the attack on environmental regulations and policies will be relentless in the Bush years, and that in areas where the law can't be changed, non-enforcement (as in Norton's Colorado and Whitman's New Jersey) will be rife. For the environmental community, this is the naked face of compassionate conservatism. CONTACT: Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund, (202)667-4500, www. earthjustice.org; Endangered Species Coalition, (202)682-9400, www.stopextinction.org; Sierra Club, (202)547-1141, www.sierraclub.org; Wilderness Society, (202)833-2300, www. tws.org.

STANDING ALONE

The Bush Administration is also likely to retreat from international commitment on the environment, especially on programs involving family planning and reductions in global warming emissions. As one of his first acts as President, Bush made clear his views on women's reproductive rights by reimposing the so-called "global gag rule," which bans federal funding to international family planning groups that also offer abortion services, counseling or referrals. "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions," Bush said when announcing the ban.

But according to many observers, the ban, originally imposed by Ronald Reagan and then lifted by President Clinton after George Bush, Sr. left office, has the paradoxical effect of causing more abortions. The London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, for instance, which had received $5 million per year in U.S. funding, is canceling campaigns promoting safe sex and contraception in Asia and Africa. "By stop-support to Planned Parenthood, the result is more abortions, not less," said Med Bouzidi, the Federation's assistant director-general.